A linguistic analysis of the representation of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle in the British press: A corpus-based study

Abstract

[eng] The study of gender discourse has mainly focused on the differences in the speech produced by men and women. However, there has been comparatively less discussion about the language used to represent either gender, not to mention the influence that the cultural background of people belonging to the same gender exerts on their representation. With the aim of contributing to filling this gap, this dissertation focuses on the representation of two females who belong to the same social group (the British royal family), as found in present-day British online press. These women are Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. Although they share gender and rank, their cultural backgrounds set them apart and that is hypothesized to influence their representation in the press. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reveal if there is a defamatory and disparaging discourse towards one of the two women. For this purpose, a balanced corpus has been compiled taking two main extralinguistic variables into account: the political stance of the newspaper as well as the sex of their authors. Likewise, several intra-linguistic variables are analysed: names and epithets, binomial expressions and adjectives in reference to both Middleton and Markle. In doing so, this thesis is intended to point out which the social tendencies and attitudes are in today’s British press.